The Apache Software Foundation’s
(ASF) XML Project’s Batik Team today announced the release of Batik 1.0, a
sophisticated open source, Java-based toolkit for SVG (scalable vector
graphics).
SVG is an XML syntax for rich 2D graphics and Batik allows developers to
view, generate and manipulate SVG images with unprecedented precision, detail
and functionality. Since the release of the W3C candidate recommendation of
the SVG specification, Batik continues to set new high-water marks for the
implementation of this maturing specification.
“In the past months the Batik team has moved quickly toward realizing its
goal of providing a full implementation of the W3C’s SVG specification,” said
Vincent Hardy of the Batik team. “The latest Batik release provides a high
quality implementation of many of the high-end SVG features. With the highly
modular tool, developers can cut down the cost of creating, viewing and
exchanging graphical content between applications or across the Internet, and
easily generate, manipulate or view SVG content. The contribution, experience
and expertise of companies and individuals has helped create a team dedicated
to the success of the project.”

By leveraging the force of XML and the visual strengths of dynamic and
easily accessible vector graphics, the Apache XML Project’s Batik team lead
the drive in building an industrial-grade embeddable Web graphics software
solution. Batik delivers core components for three main purposes:

— generating SVG content from any Java applications,
— viewing SVG content, and
— converting SVG to and from other formats.

The vision is to help make SVG the central format for exchanging and
viewing any type of 2D graphical information while still making it easy to
convert SVG images to other formats, for environments that do not yet support
SVG natively.

SVG combines two of computer graphic’s great practices, vector graphics
and raster graphics, in a resolution independent framework, enabling SVG
images to be rendered with high quality on any screen or printer. The SVG
framework also includes many sophisticated graphics features such as gradient
paints, filter effects, and sophisticated text support. This unique
combination of graphical features in one standard format makes it ideal for
describing any rich image content, from CAD diagrams to postcards to Grandma.
Furthermore, by using an XML syntax, SVG is extremely easy to generate,
search, transform and manipulate. Unlike other formats, SVG becomes a powerful
tool for anybody managing image content for the Web or other environments.

New features in Batik 1.0 release:
— Filter effects such as drop shadows and lighting effects.
— Internal and external use — allows developers to create.
— Highly structured SVG images where common components are easily reused.
— Masking and clipping.
— Markers.
— Linking — the ability to define SVG graphical elements as “links”
(similar to HTML hyperlinks) which can point to other graphical
elements in an SVG image (for example allowing you to zoom in a portion
of a map) either in the same SVG image, in another SVG image or in
another document (such as an HTML page).
— Sophisticated text support — Batik now supports control over complex
text layout (such as individual glyph advance).
— Run-time extensibility — Much of Batik can now be extended at
run-time, providing among other things new graphics primitives, and
support for new image file formats.

With this release, Batik provides extensive support of most static SVG
features and includes:

— Improved SVG generator — allows all applications to easily export
their graphics in the SVG format. This generator has been extended and
made more flexible.
— Improved packaging of the Batik modules — making them easier to
integrate into applications. For example, developers can plug in the
Batik’s viewing component to add SVG viewing capability into their
applications without having to know anything about SVG.

Batik delivers a number of sample applications that leverage its core
components, such as an SVG browser. Screenshots of that browser can be seen
at: http://xml.apache.org/batik/svgviewer.html .
In the near future, the Batik team aims to provide developers worldwide
support for full dynamic behavior, including scripting and SMIL (synchronized
multimedia integration language) for animations.

“Our relationship with the Apache Software Foundation allows Sun engineers
to develop technology implementations in a collaborative environment and
better enables Sun to deliver robust products based on open standards. The
Batik project demonstrates the synergy between the Java platform’s portable
code and XML’s portable data. We are proud to have worked in cooperation with
Kodak and ILOG on this remarkable toolkit for SVG-based graphics.”
— Jon Bosak, Distinguished Engineer, Sun Microsystems

“Kodak congratulates the Apache Software Foundation and the Batik project
on the 1.0 release of the SVG toolkit. Batik will significantly advance SVG as
an important element for enabling both graphical and image-intensive creative
Web-based applications. Because of its open source nature, ISV’s will be able
to leverage the powerful and extensible framework it provides to develop new
classes of creative applications and to deploy SVG in environments not
previously possible. Such applications and systems could prove fundamental to
delivering new products and services through our Internet photofinishing
services.”
— Daryl Hunt, Director of Strategic Standards, Eastman Kodak Company

“The goal of the Batik project complements ILOG’s goal of creating and
delivering the richer, more compelling online experience that Web content
providers and users want, and we congratulate the Apache Foundation and the
Batik team for this important milestone. A supporter of SVG since its
inception, ILOG will continue its commitment to the standard in our roles as a
W3C working group member, Batik technical committee member, and with real
products, such as ILOG JViews, one of the first SVG products on the market.”
— Jean-Francois Abramatic, Senior Vice President of ILOG Research and
Development.

The Batik project’s name comes from the famous and highly developed art
traditions of the Indonesian island of Java. The Apache XML team seeks to
honor and capture Java’s rich history of creating geometric patterned and
colorfully designed textiles through Batik’s high quality graphical
representation capabilities.

The Batik Project encourages participation through its mailing list:
http://xml.apache.org/mail.html/.

For more information about the Batik project please see
http://xml.apache.org/batik/.

About the Apache Software Foundation
The Apache Software Foundation provides organizational, legal and
financial support for the Apache open source software projects. The Foundation
was established as a nonprofit corporation in order to ensure continuation of
the Apache projects beyond the participation of individual volunteers, to
enable contributions of intellectual property and financial support, and to
provide a vehicle for limiting legal exposure while participating in open
source software projects. For more information on the Apache Software
Foundation, please see http://xml.apache.org/.

From a column at LinuxPlanet: “OK, it’s official: Linux on the desktop is dead. Oh, sure, the corpse is still kicking around a little, and there’s some debate about whether the patient is
officially dead. But all we’re waiting for now is the official death certificate from the coroner … But as it stands Linux on the desktop is not an entity that is usable by the average PC user when it comes
to accomplishing their daily work. This has nothing to do with the quality of the desktop environment, but
has everything to do with how PCs are actually used: end users don’t use the environment, they use
applications.”

From PR Newswire: Thanks to Trolltech, the Apple
software universe is getting a lot bigger.
Trolltech is demonstrating a preview release of Qt/Mac (the Mac OS X-port
of Qt, Trolltech’s emerging-standard cross-platform C++ GUI application
development framework) at Apple’s World Wide Developer Conference, Monday, May
21 – Friday, May 25, 2001, at the San Jose Convention Center.

From ZDNet: “Will Unix be enough to grow a new crop of Apple customers?

That’s the question Apple will begin to address Monday at its weeklong Worldwide Developer
Conference in San Jose, Calif.

By choosing to build Mac OS X on Unix, the company opens up thousands of new applications
to Mac owners–potentially expanding Apple’s market share–and gives Unix developers
access to a lucrative new audience.”

– By Dan Berkes –
MandrakeSoft, creator of the popular Linux-Mandrake distribution, confirmed today that Henri Poole is no longer the company’s chief executive officer.
A spokeswoman at the company’s Pasadena, Calif., office said that Poole was no longer with the company, but was unable to provide further details. Prior to joining MandrakeSoft, Poole, 37, co-founded Vivid Studios, a popular Web design firm based in the San Francisco bay area. In addition to his role of co-founder, he was also Vivid’s chairman and CEO.

The CEO spot at MandrakeSoft has been filled by company co-founder Jacques Le Marois. Along with Le Marois, other top positions at the company are held by fellow company founders Gaël Duval and Frédéric Bastok, who created the Paris-based company in 1998.

MandrakeSoft is perhaps best known for its desktop-centric Linux distribution, touted by the company as “the most international” flavor of Linux available due to an installation program fluent in 40 languages. The change in leadership has led to speculation that the company may shift its strategy from the desktop arena to the enterprise server market.

We’ll have more on changes at MandrakeSoft as they come in. Stay tuned!

Alan Cox releases the latest version of the the 2.4.4 Linux kernel. Read on for the changelog:

ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/alan/2.4/

                 Intermediate diffs are available from
                        http://www.bzimage.org


2.4.4-ac12
o       Just tracking Linus 2.4.5pre4                   
        - A chunk more merged with Linus
        - dropped out some oddments that are now
          obsolete

An anonymous reader pointed us in the direction of this article at MozillaQuest: “Why are major Linux distributions not shipping with Netscape 6 included
in their packages? To find out we asked people at Caldera, Mandrake, Red
Hat, and SuSE. Altogether, these four Linux distributions comprise about
90% of the Linux distribution market. Representatives from these major
Linux distributors have some very interesting comments.”

How does the United States government respond to a breach of computer security? Skim the Department of Energy’s First Responder’s Manual to find out. Available in HTML and PDF formats.

– By Jeff Field –

Over the past couple of years, PalmOS-based devices have grown immensely in
popularity. At the same time, so has Linux. So, how do the two interact
together, and how does this PalmOS-based device from Handspring perform?The Visor Platinum from Handspring is one of the latest entries in the Visor
line. Released the same time as the Visor Prism, Handspring’s color model, the
Visor Platinum is more of an upgrade to the more traditional Visor Deluxe than a
whole new handheld, such as the Visor Edge or the Visor Prism.

The unit
The unit itself is very similar to the lower-end Visor models, such as the Visor
or the Visor Deluxe. It contains little more than the original Palms did, the
LCD, four quick access buttons, up and down buttons, a holster for your
stylus, the on/screen button, and the infrared link. Where the Visor line
differs greatly, however, is the Springboard slot on the rear, used for
expansion cards that add memory or functionality. The Visor Platinum has a 33
MHz Dragonball V2 CPU, compared to the 16MHz Dragonball EZ in the Visor Deluxe.
It has 8MB of RAM, the same amount of RAM the Visor Deluxe has.

The screen in the Visor is very readable, and is quite a bit clearer than that
of the older Palm III devices. One feature of newer Palm devices and the Visor
Platinum is the backlight, which I have mixed feelings about. The
backlight only lights up the characters and pixels on screen, not the entire
screen. While this saves battery, it makes the light almost useless in anything
but complete darkness. This is quite a change, and not an entirely welcome one,
from the backlight of older PalmOS devices, which were more like flashlights.

The interface
The interface of the Handspring Visor Platinum is the same as that on all PalmOS
based devices. The interface is a very simple icon-based interface for launching
applications. Most Palm applications follow the same rule — the simpler, the
better. Rarely will you find a Palm application that suffers from feature
bloat.

The Visor has three interfaces for entering data. The first, and most popular
for entering data directly into the device, is to enter it with the stylus via
“Graffiti,” the abbreviated alphabet of Palm-based devices. The way Graffiti
works is that the user enters strokes, designated in the Graffiti guide, for letters and numbers on the
Grafitti pad below the screen of the Visor. Graffiti is not very hard to learn, which is
surprising. A few characters are difficult — for instance, when I first learned it,
I had all the trouble in the world making a “9.” However, once you get used to
it, it seems like second nature.

The next method of entering data is the “tap” keyboard that you can launch on
screen when typing in PalmOS. This is an easy way to quickly input data, and for
some users, it will allow them to input data faster. It is a fairly simple process – you
do a Graffiti command stroke, “/k” or go to the edit menu in your application
and select keyboard, and a software keyboard pops up, taking up approximately
half the screen. There are buttons for shift, caps lock, numbers and
international symbols, so anything you can write with Graffiti you can type on
this software keyboard using the stylus.

The third method to enter data is through the
software on your PC, then synchroizing your handheld with your PC. This is
really useful when you want to put large amounts of data onto the Visor, because
you can probably type faster than you can enter data with your stylus.

Setting up the Visor
Setting up the device to work with a Linux machine is fairly simple. Assuming you have a kernel with support for the Visors’ USB cradle built in, you simply compile and load the
module. In some cases, such as with Mandrake 8, the module is prebuilt and you
must simply tell it (visor) and its parent module (usbserial) to load on boot.
The data connection to the Visor will then exist on device /dev/ttyUSB1, which
you should link to /dev/pilot for convenience. Once this is done, you are ready
to sync the Visor with whatever software you choose.

Applications
The Visor comes with a variety of productivity applications by default. Among
them are a calculator, a memo pad, a date book, a to-do list, expense and mail
applets. All of these applications have a variety of advanced features, and will
be more than enough for most users. If the default software does not stand up
to your expectations, plenty of Web sites offer Palm software free of charge,
with a few apps requiring registration. However, one site really interested me because it has a rather unique application database — it has a list of Open Source
programs available for the PalmOS, such as EasyCalc, a scientific
calculator for PalmOS. Currently the site lists nearly 150 Open Source Palm
applications.

Synchronizing in Linux
The most appealing thing about the Visor and all PalmOS devices is how well they
integrate with desktop computers, making them perfect companions for those who
do not want to lug a laptop to meetings just to jot down notes. The Visor
and all Palm devices are designed to synchronize only with Windows and MacOS,
however, there are now plenty of utilities to do this on Linux. The ones I used
were gpilot and jpilot. I had no luck getting kpilot to work, which I thought
was odd.

The first application I tried to use to sync my Visor was Gnome-Pilot.
Gnome-Pilot is configurable through your Gnome control center, provided you use
Gnome. You configure “conduits,” which in turn synchronizes between your Visor and
a specific application. For instance, Gnome-cal was used to sync the datebook
from the Visor, and did a decent job. There are, however, several problems with
Gnome-pilot. First of all, though Gnome-cal has a to-do list, the to-do list for
the Visor was not synchronized with it. Also, there appears to be no way to
install programs to the Visor with it, a crucial feature. However, it is, of
course, a work in progress and I suspect these problems will be resolved in a
future version.

The other application I tried, jpilot, reminded me a lot of the Windows
application that shipped with the older Palm IIIs, and which may ship with the
Visor. Jpilot is a simple app with a built in calendar, to-do
list, memo pad, and address book. These subsections of the program have all the
features of their Visor counterparts, and are synchronized with them. For me,
this is the best solution because I really just want to have the data stored on
my PC for backup purposes and to edit it without having to use a stylus. Jpilot
also has a feature to backup the handheld to your computer, and the ability to
install applications to it, a crucial feature noticeably lacking in Gnome-pilot.
I installed several applications through jpilot with no trouble. The one thing
jpliot does not do that I wish it did is monitor for when the user hits the
hotsync button on the cradle, as the Windows software and the Gnome-pilot
software do. In order to sync with jpilot you have to hit the hotsync button on
the cradle and then click the “sync” button in the program. Overall, I
think jpilot is a better solution right now, although Gnome-pilot shows a lot of potential, and will probably surpass jpilot in
the end.

Springboard modules
All the handhelds in Handspring’s Visor line have a unique expansion slot for Springboards,
small cartridges similar to those of Game Boy games. These cartridges provide a
variety of functions, from games to calculators to extra memory. While I am not
reviewing the Springboard module I received with my Visor, I will
discuss it briefly to give you an idea of how Springboards work. The Springboard
I got with the unit is called powerOne Graph, a module that adds the abilities
of a graphing calculator and other features to your Visor. When you put the board in,
it loads itself and adds a powerOne icon to your list of applications, and the
first time you use it, it asks you if you want the application to come up when
you hit the calculator button on the unit, instead of the default calculator. The
process could not be any easier, and really helps extend the usefulness of the
unit.

Conclusion
The Handspring Visor Platinum is an excellent handheld. It is sturdily designed,
easy to use, and boasts very good Linux compatibility thanks to the Linux and
PalmOS communities. I personally am addicted to these little things. Without
them, my average day would be a mess. I am looking to upgrade from my Palm III
at some point, and I am definitely considering a Handspring device. I am pleased with the results I got during the
review, and I know many others who are quite happy with their Visors. The Visor
Platinum can be found for $276 on Pricewatch.

“This is a stable release. The new code focuses on improving usability and
smoothing corner cases. It marks the first time that exporting in MS Excel95
format is considered stable enough to optionally overwrite existing xls files.
It also greatly improves style defragmentation. If your workbooks had
started using hundreds of megabytes and slowed to a crawl, load them with 0.65
and resave.” Announcement at Linux Weekly News.